


Hiraeth

by EllieL



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alderaan, Coping, Drinking, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Light Angst, Memories, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23933614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieL/pseuds/EllieL
Summary: On the second anniversary of the Battle of Yavin, Han and Leia share a bottle of wine.Submitted to the HanLeia Challenge April 2020 prompt "Home."
Relationships: Leia Organa/Han Solo
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51
Collections: HanLeia Challenge





	Hiraeth

The twilight still held some of the afternoon’s warmth as she slipped out of the festivities celebrating the second anniversary of the Battle of Yavin. She’d hoped to depart unnoticed, but Han always noticed; he’d caught her just as she was making her final move for the door. While she wanted to be away from the revelers, she didn’t necessarily object to him.   
  
He promised he’d returned from this latest supply run with something for her, so she’d agreed to meet him out by the Falcon. It wasn’t so unusual; he often brought back personal items for friends on their bases, had kept her in hairpins and conditioner for the last two years. But something about the way he’d said it made it sound like more than hair care products.    
  
Crossing the gravelly expanse of landing field, mottled with double moonlight under the camouflage netting, she sought the familiar silhouette of the Corellian freighter. Slipping past it, she reached the open edge of the meadow and took a deep breath. The grass was a silvery teal in the odd light, stretching away to nearby craggy, dark peaks. It reminded her so much of home, from the faint buzzy chirps of nocturnal insects to the cool breeze whistling down off the mountains.   
  
The Fiorenzia Valley was stunning, and she wasn’t quite sure how they’d lucked into it as their latest base. She knew it wouldn’t be for long; they’d had three bases since Yavin. This idyll was just a temporary layover before their next, more permanent base on Hoth; she knew too much about that planet to be eager to arrive any time soon. It would be difficult to leave this peaceful beauty.   
  
As she sat down at the edge of the grass, a breeze ruffled the wisps of hair that had slipped loose from her coronet of braids over the course of the long day. It was a marvelous feeling after so long on space stations and ships and enclosed bases. So much of her time had been spent outdoors while growing up, and she missed it dreadfully. Tilting her head back, she gazed up at the twinkle of stars and tried to orient herself in the galaxy.    
  
Behind her, worn leather soles scuffed softly across the gravel announcing his arrival. “Hey, Princess,” he said quietly as he joined her on the stubbly grass.   
  
“Hi.” It had been a week or so since she’d seen him, as he had been off on the supply run that brought back the food and beverage currently being consumed by the partiers they’d left behind. He looked handsome in the dual moonlight, she could admit to herself now, just as surely as she could admit to herself that they were glacially, inevitably shifting towards something beyond mere friendship.    
  
Tearing her eyes from his face, she noticed a bottle in his hands. She didn’t ask, merely quirked an eyebrow.   
  
“So I picked up a bunch of the cheap liquor for that party. Guy offered me a deal on some better stuff, too. Got myself a couple things, and thought you might want this.”   
  
He held out a wine bottle, dark glass and label sparkling in the starlight. Carefully she wrapped one hand around the bottle and pulled it close, studying the label in the bright moonlight. The gold script was achingly familiar. “Beier?”   
  
“It any good? I just saw where it was from, wasn’t sure if was decent or swill.”   
  
“More than decent. My parents knew the vintners. Their daughter Alysse was my friend.” She stared at the label, the sketched image of the vineyard she’d played tag in on a summer afternoon a lifetime ago. A vineyard that no longer existed, a wine that would never be produced again, a childhood friend she’d never laugh with again on a sunny afternoon. Closing her eyes, she took a deep, shuddering breath. It took no imagination at all to feel herself back there, a younger, carefree Leia.

Beside her, he was quiet. For all his ability to push her every last button sometimes, he seemed to have a knack for knowing when to keep his mouth shut. She appreciated that about him.   
  
She opened her eyes and lifted the bottle towards him. “Would you like to share this?” Impulsive.   
  
Surprise was clear on his face, but it easily transformed into a smile, a flash of white teeth. “Yeah. Lemme grab a corkscrew and a couple of glasses from the Falcon.”   
  
While he returned to the ship, she returned her gaze to the stars. One sparkling light, no brighter than thousands of others, caught her eye, made her breath catch. So absorbed was she that his return went unnoticed.   
  
“What’s got your attention up there?”   
  
She didn’t turn to look at him, instead pointed up at the heavens. “Home.”   
  
He sat down next to her, closer than he’d been before, hip almost touching hers. “Show me.”   
  
Assessing astronomical positions, she ticked her fingers across the sky. “To the left of the beta moon, at ten o’clock. Maybe a thumbs length away, faintly bluish.”   
  
He hummed, and she could feel his eyes on her more than the night sky, before he turned his attention to the bottle sitting between them. The cork gave way with a bit of a squeak and faint pop, and he handed it over to her. Finally breaking her gaze away from the light of her distant home star, she stared at the cork in her palm, tried to decipher the Alderaanian characters on it in the darkness and failing. She tucked it into a pocket to treasure later.   
  
The glasses he brought weren’t wine glasses, but two lowball tumblers that did the job. As he handed one to her, he tilted the other towards her, and she returned the toast with a gentle clink.   
  
“To Alderaan,” he said softly, taking her by surprise.   
  
“Saalud,” she returned in a whisper, speaking a simple word of Alderaanian for the first time this year.   
  
Both sipped the wine in silence for a few minutes. She closed her eyes. It tasted even better than she remembered, like lazy summer afternoons picking berries from the hedgerow next to the vineyard, like the summer breeze past the speeder on the way across the valley to her family’s country home.   
  
She cleared her throat, trying to find her voice again and liquid courage in the wine. But he broke the silence first.   
  
“Wine’s not usually my drink of choice, but this is good. I’m sorry I couldn’t get it back to you for last week.”   
  
Turning her head, she studied him a minute. “It’s all right. They didn’t do anything to commemorate this year.”   
  
“What?!”   
  
His outrage warmed her heart a bit, just when she was feeling so cold and alone with her grief and memories. She shrugged, though. “I’m the only Alderaanian here. Rieekan is already on Hoth. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”   
  
Before answering her, he took a long draught of the wine and looked up at the sky where she’d been fixated earlier. “It is though. They blew up your whole fucking planet.”   
  
Unable to look at him and unable to look back up at the stars, she looked down into the shimmering surface of the wine, black in this light. “I relive it enough.”   
  
He remained quiet a moment, and when he spoke, his voice rumbled with anger. “I’ve seen some pretty cruel things in this galaxy, but them making you watch that is still the worst thing I’ve heard.”

She took a sip of the wine, savoring it. It  _ tasted _ like home, reassuring and peaceful. “That’s not the worst part, really. It was so enormous it’s almost abstract. An entire planet.”

Though he studied her face, he didn’t respond, just drank deeply from his own cup and waited for her to continue.

“Everyone else is hoping to make it through this war and go  _ home _ , to make a home that’s a better place than they left it. That’s what they’re fighting for. But Alderaan already  _ was _ that better place for me. And even if I make it through this, there’s no home for me anymore.”

He shifted against her, a soft bump of the hip, refilled her wine. “Not everyone here has a home to go back to,” he finally said. 

She tapped her first two fingers against the bloodstripe running along his knee. “Corellia’s still there. Your seas and grasslands are still there.”

Shrugging, he took another long drink of the wine. “I wasn’t exactly living it up at the beach resorts and nerf ranches, Princess. Life on the streets looks pretty similar no matter what world you’re on. And besides, I’ve been living off-planet now for as long as I ever lived on it.”

“Citizen of the galaxy?” She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Sure.” After a few beats of silence, he waved his cup toward the distant peaks. “This like Alderaan too? There were some famous mountains, big winter resorts, right?”

“Yes. There was a great focus on the environment and conservation. Everyone spent a great deal of time outside, even the royal family. Hiking, skiing, just having a meal out on the terrace. We hosted some state dinners outdoors.”

“This life has gotta be hard then, so different than home.”

She tilted her head, considering. “In some ways it’s easier. There’s not much reminding me of what I’ve lost on a Mon Cal cruiser. Here though…” she waved a hand at the mountains, deep indigo with glowing, snowy summits. 

After a beat, she quietly confessed, “I just want to go climb one. Sit at the top and breathe fresh air.”

“Is that what you miss the most? Being out in the fresh air?”

“It seems silly—“

“Nah,” shaking his head, “It makes sense, living on ships. I don’t miss it because I never knew it. But I can see how you’d get used to living like this. Ever thought about just running away, climbing up that mountain and staying there?”

For the first time all week, she laughed. “Twice a day and thrice during Council meetings!” 

“So why don’t you?” She got the feeling he already knew the answer but wanted to hear her articulate it.

“Because then Alderaan really would have been lost for nothing. If I give up, then every sacrifice, everything I’ve lost, is for nothing. If I keep going on, can win this, maybe I can give some kind of purpose to the loss of Alderaan.” 

“So shouldn’t you take the time to enjoy things that remind you of it?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing now?” She looked up at his face, confused.

“Nah, we can do way better than the gravelly edge of a landing field. C’mon.” He somehow managed to stand and gather both the wine bottle and his glass in one hand, before extending the free one to her.

With a skeptical glance, she took it and let him help her to her feet. He didn’t let go of her hand once she’d risen, though, instead tugging her across the field towards the distant tree line. As they crossed the expanse, the mechanical hum of ships and life support systems faded away, replaced by the chittering of tsikaads and cheeping night-peepers, and the occasional rustle of a small creature in the grass. The breeze was stronger too, whipping grass around her legs, hip-deep, snagging her and forcing her to slow, to appreciate the journey and the world around her and the warm hand holding hers. 

She finally tore her eyes from the scenery when he slowed to a halt at the shadowy edge of the trees, mountain peaks casting a deep shadow down over all of them. Eyes having adjusted to the moonlight and lack of artificial base lighting, everything seemed aglow, especially him. He seemed ethereal, yet so close that she couldn’t help squeezing his hand gently to reassure herself of his reality.

“Where are we going, Han?” It was a ridiculous query now, so far from the base, holding hands in the moonlight. It had too many potential answers that she wasn’t ready to hear, wasn't ready to answer for herself.

He must have seen that, because he didn’t answer any of those questions, and released her hand, subtly, lifting the wine bottle instead and refilling her glass. “I dunno. Just a little closer to nature. ‘S prettier out here.”

His eyes on hers as he spoke made it clear he wasn’t merely talking about the landscape. It gave her an opening, but also room to step back. Tonight, it was the only thing she could do, and went so far as to physically move away, spinning away to take in the chiaroscuro peaks and inky forest. She could feel his eyes on her, watching. 

“It is prettier out here.” 

How long had it been since she’d been fully outside of the confines of artificial lighting and air processing and the hum of engines and electronics? The air smelled different here, away from the ships, no more grease--other than the faintly lingering scent of it on Han--no more concentration of beings too long confined together. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. It almost smelled like the forest at night, in the Alderaanian mountains, where she’d spent so much of her girlhood.

When she opened her eyes, she turned back around to face Han, and his face was shadowed. It made it easier.

“I’m never going to see those mountains again, swim in those lakes. Never going to take my children hiking there with their grandparents. There’s no  _ home _ anymore.” Her voice broke a little on the last, but she wasn’t crying, not really. Not in front of him.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have--”

“No, no I’m glad we walked out here. I am.” She allowed herself to step back close to him, to rest a hand on his forearm. “It’s still hard to think about, most days. But I need to. I _have_ _to_ remember it. This...this is good.”

He nodded, a bobbing the dark silhouette of his head against the darker treeline. Then, abruptly, he sat, almost disappearing into the long grass. She squawked in surprise as his hand tangled with hers again, urged her to do the same. With only a token resistance, she let herself be pulled down. Then his hand retreated, and she was left alone in a cocoon of long grass. 

It was akin to sensory deprivation, in that all outside human stimulus was gone, just her, alone. But rather than nothingness, the nothingness she’d felt around her for so long, she was suddenly aware of everything. Even the inert things, the rocks and glaciers, were part of the world around her, interacted with by the animals and insects and trees, by the grasses that swayed slowly around her and the breeze that brushed across her cheeks. Sipping the wine, she could taste home, too.

It all felt suddenly vibrant, in ways she’d either forgotten or failed to appreciate when experiencing them before. She had a feeling it was the latter; she’d never quite appreciated how beautiful Alderaan was until she’d left it, and it had been rare for her to spend much time simply enjoying the outdoors after joining the Senate. All this vibrance and vitality had existed at home, had been home, not so long ago. Solitary in the shadowy grass, she let herself cry for it, let herself miss everything she would never have again.

The tears flowed freely but silently, washing down her cheeks more easily than she’d expected. She had tried to avoid the enormity of her loss, allowing herself a limited grief, what seemed like a manageable portion of what was too great to comprehend at once. She’d thought of her parents, her family, her friends, but the entirety had been overwhelming. The entire planet itself, flora and fauna and mountains and seas. Mount Aldera’s imposing slopes and the little silver fishes in the fountain on the terrace at the summer palace, sweet bright winterberries growing wild in hedgerows and the tumultuous Ekaitz Sea. It might be overwhelming her now that she was feeling it. But she permitted herself the feelings, tears almost cleansing.

Even after she stopped, she sat silently, appreciating. It might be her last chance for anything like this for a while; her orders to Hoth were imminent. She lost track of time, wine long finished, and she’d nearly forgotten Han was out here too, beside her somewhere, until he shifted with a rustle of grass, reminding her of his presence before standing. 

He seemed to gaze off into the distant mountains for a long moment before turning back to her and offering a hand. With no hesitation she took it, rising gracefully and meeting his eye. She waited for him to say something, but he merely turned and made his way back across the field towards his ship, not even glancing back to make sure she was behind him.

She was, though, just a few steps away, absorbed in the sway of the grass and damp, loamy smell rising from the ground underfoot. Only when they reached the shorn grass at the edge of the landing field did he stop as she caught up to him. 

“Thank you,” she broke the silence as she stopped beside him, and offered up the return of his cup. He took it, and traded her the empty wine bottle.

His eyes found hers, gleaming in the brighter, artificial light here by the base. “Any time, Princess. Any time.” 

Nodding, she watched him turn and swagger away towards the Falcon. Then she looked down at the empty bottle in hand and cradled it carefully to her as she made her way back indoors. It was only one piece of glass, but one piece of home. She vowed to take more time to remember and appreciate it, whenever reminders presented themselves.

She had a feeling Han would find more reminders for her in the future.


End file.
